modern serial terminal

There was never a version of Linux, or UNIX in general, less bloated than Windows 95. Windows 95 will very comfortably get you TCP/IP, protected memory, preemptive multitasking[1], and a graphical desktop on a 486 SX with 8M of RAM. Linux 2.0 with XF86 3.x was a carnival of swapping on that configuration. Solaris x86 wouldn't even boot. If Windows 3.1 was the last nail in the coffin for UNIX on the desktop, Windows 95 was the last shovel of dirt and the weepy obit. It's almost fun to load up Redhat 4 on a typical PC of the day and watch it take twenty minutes to boot. [1] Yes, Windows 95 had memory protection and preemptive multitasking. All native win32 and native kernel code ran that way. The catch was that 16 bit drivers and applications were exempted from these restrictions. Worse still, Windows 95 shipped with some 16 bit drivers for generic devices, giving you a broken configuration out of the box on a lot of hardware.